Jenaicklefritz’s Weblog

Dear friends,

Though I loath to keep my thoughts bottled, I have to leave a message for at least someone to read. This is not a prequel to things to come, but a hint at things that may. Allow me to explain…

Green trees, livid skies, the smell of salt water, and cool rain have been burning my mind each night. In dreams of dancing gray-blues and dreary-greens that reflect my woodland seaside paradise, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake somewhere. My heart longs for the tall, grandiose parlor I’d foolishly rejected. Yet those vast emerald carpets of ferns and nettle, and pillars of hemlock are etched deeply into my soul’s memory. I’d been there before, tempting fate with short pilgrimages, only to turn my back on the wood that has called to me since birth. There’s a great picture window there, designed to glorify the sunset, a prelude to the maternal night. It’s decorated foaming curls and brine tapestries still beckon me, each slumber, to look out over that sea… especially whenever the dried, sallow fields and brittle rock of my self-imposed prison close in on my waking days and drive me into a claustrophobic sleep. A sleep fashioned only to tempt me with dreams of an inviting home. That yellow hell I’ve chained myself in has only grown more hateful to me, as the ice and death of winter reminds me that life slows down in a frozen desert. It’s a cruel fate I could never settle for. And after weeks of ignoring my dreams, I can’t help but wonder why I still aim for silken paper houses built on the red sun’s alter, when all I’ve ever wanted waits behind me in the rainforest of the free world. Where life is unavoidable, and the air always allows room to breath—how can I not give in? What spirit of the orient can offer me more than the rich earth and living stone that has called me from the land of mountains for years before the east side of the planet was even a glimmer in my eye? What can the concrete islands give me that I cannot get in the home that was created just for me?

But how do I take back five years of insolence? This earth must, by now, have given up on me—a prodigal child desperate to run to a metropolitan purgatory and hide. How can I retire to the emerald rapture, after I’ve fought the tidal draw so long? Maybe I can’t. What could my five years of distraction possibly offer me out there? I’m not sure now, but I’d be blessed for the chance to find out.

I refuse to be a prisoner of myself forever.

See you when I wake up,
Jenai